From rollerskating queens to red, white and blue wheelie bins, it's hard to find anything in Britain this week that doesn't have a jubilee theme.

- Showbiz royalty -

Head to the village of Wellington in Herefordshire in western England, and you'll find 104 scarecrows dressed up as queens, kings, princes and princesses by local residents as part of a competition.

"We've probably got a dozen or so queens dotted around... and a few 'Purple Rain' Princes," said co-organiser Phil Smith.

Princess Fiona from "Shrek", Queen singer Freddie Mercury and Princess Leia from "Star Wars" also feature.

- Get your skates on -

In Chipping Sodbury, western England, crowds will be entertained at a street party by a queen impersonator on rollerskates, The Times reported.

- Dance fever -

"Dig that crazy rhythm," Prince Charles once said as he tried his hand at scratch DJing in 2001. Now 73, he is no longer down with the kids.

He danced a tango with an alpaca farmer during a surprise appearance at a jubilee tea dance for older people near his Highgrove estate.

"It was wonderful," said Bridget Tibbs. "He was very lovely to dance with, a lovely sense of rhythm, a nice hold. It was a pleasure."

- Art imitates life -

The queen made a surprise cameo with James Bond actor Daniel Craig at the opening of the 2012 London Olympics. Charles and his wife Camilla have had to make do with "EastEnders".

The couple star in Thursday's jubilee edition of the long-running BBC soap opera, which largely revolves around family strife, scandal and sibling rivalries.

- Corgi-mania -

The popularity of corgis -- the queen's favourite canine breed -- is at a 30-year high, according to The Kennel Club, which tracks doggy demand.

Some 1,223 of the short-legged, waddling Pembroke Welsh Corgis were registered in 2021, said TKC spokesman Bill Lambert.

"The breed has certainly seen a boost in recent years, largely down, it would seem, to their starring roles in 'The Crown'," he added.

Royal social media channels have even unveiled a cute, crown-wearing corgi emoji, named PJ.

- Clean for the queen -

Still on the theme of dogs, one waste management company has even brought out corgi-branded dog poo bins.

Divert.co.uk has also unveiled distinctive wheelie bins in the red, white and blue colours of the union flag.

"Even bins deserve to celebrate a remarkable monarch," said company spokesman Mark Hall.

- Tea and cake -

Lara Mason didn't just bake a cake for the jubilee, she confected a life-sized cake of Her Majesty, with 400 eggs, 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of flour and 20 kilograms of butter.

Slices of the sponge sovereign were served to bingo players in Birmingham with a cup of tea. Naturally.

- Topper that -

Not to be outdone, the Holmes Chapel Community Yarn Bombers in Cheshire, northwest England, knitted a life-sized queen and a corgi.

"She has been in my dining room in various stages of dress," said Anita Armitt, 66, who set up the knitting group with a friend.

"The first night she was out I felt like I had to go down and say goodnight to her because I'd got into the routine of doing it!"

The village is also decorated with knitted bunting, soldiers and "topper" crowns on post boxes.

- Royal Lego -

More models, this time at Legoland Windsor, where a miniature display of the royal family has been fashioned from more than 18,000 individual bricks.

The plastic tribute includes a version of the Buckingham Palace balcony and took about 282 hours to put together.

- 'Big Lizzie' -

As tributes go, getting more than 300 Royal Navy sailors to spell out the royal cypher "E II R 70" on a 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier is hard to beat.

It was staged on the deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth II, which is affectionately known by its crew as "Big Lizzie".

- Not so rotten -

The jubilee has even slightly got to Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, famous for the 1977 punk anthem "God Save the Queen".

"God bless the Queen. She's put with a lot," he told The Times, insisting he has never had anything against anyone in the royal family.

"It's the institution of it that bothers me and the assumption that I'm to pay for that," he told the newspaper from his home in Malibu.

"There's where I draw the line. It's like, 'No, you're not getting ski holidays on my tax'."

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One of them is volunteer French engineer Emmanuel Durand, a specialist in 3D data acquisition, who is assisting a bevy of architects, engineers, historic building experts and a museum director to record buildings in Kyiv, Lviv, Chernigiv and Kharkiv.

Durand steps over a jumbled pile of beams and crunches over the rubble that was once Kharkiv's 19th-century fire station.

He plants his laser scanner, a sort of tripod with a pivoting head, in a strategic corner of the severely damaged building.

The redbrick fire station and its watchtower, built in 1887, are a monument to Kharkiv's industrial revolution.

Durand's gadget records the building from all angles.

"The scanner records 500,000 points per second. We'll get 10 million points from this location. Then we'll change location and go round the whole building, outside and inside. A billion points in all," he explains.

At the end of the day, Durand assembles all the data on a computer "like the pieces of a jigsaw" to digitally reconstruct the building.

The result is a perfect reproduction, accurate to within five millimetres (a fraction of an inch) that can be rotated in any direction or sliced into sections. You can even see the holes where blast waves from explosions have damaged the structure.

"This enables us to map out the building for the future. That could help us work out if anything has moved, which is important for safety purposes, and see what can be restored and what can't. It's also useful from a historical point of view," he says.

"We've got the actual missile-damaged building and an exact replica of how it used to look."

- 'Cultural genocide'-

In Kharkiv alone, around 500 buildings are listed as being of historic architectural significance. Most are in the dense historic city centre, on which Russian airstrikes are concentrated, according to architect Kateryna Kuplytska, a member of the body documenting damaged heritage sites.

She estimates that over a hundred of them have been hit already.

And while Russian troops have loosened their noose around Ukraine's second city, shells still rain down with regular monotony.

New explosions and blast waves, inclement weather, construction work and site visits will all contribute to hastening the destruction of these already weakened buildings, Kuplytska says.

"That's why it's essential to record them in accurate detail so we can plan urgent interventions that will stabilise the structures" and preserve their memory, she explains.

"Recording the destruction will also assist in criminal proceedings. We see serious damage to heritage across the whole country. It's genocide towards Ukrainian people and genocide towards Ukrainian culture," she says.

After two days at the fire station, Durand moves on to the economics faculty at the Karazin National University in Kharkiv. It is located right next to the imposing headquarters of the Ukrainian secret services, which is being targeted by the Russians and has been hit on numerous occasions.

The current iteration of the economics faculty was built in Soviet times. It was designed by Serhiy Tymoshenko, the father of the  "modern Ukrainian" style of architecture of the early 20th-century, and is one of the country's first reinforced concrete structures.

Some critics suggest it is futile to document historic buildings in such meticulous detail while the war is still raging and people are dying every day.

But Tetyana Pylyptshuk, the director of the Kharkiv literary museum, begs to disagree.

"Culture is the basis of everything. If culture had developed well, people probably wouldn't be dying and there wouldn't be a war," she said.

Pylyptshuk, who also sits on the commission on damaged historical sites, has sent most of her museum collections to western Ukraine to protect them from damage -- and from looting, should Russian troops overrun Kharkiv.

"Today, everyone realises this. Maybe they were not so attentive to our cultural heritage before... but when you lose it, it hurts."

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This month the company announced it will raise the proportion of women in leadership positions to 40 percent by 2030 -- up from 34 percent now -– and is committed to ensuring equal pay.

The key weapon in her arsenal for gender equality? Data.

"Data helps keep us honest," the 38-year-old tells AFP.

"Right now, we have monthly and quarterly reports that help us look at how many female 'Grabbers' we have in different teams to ensure there is no unintentional bias and whether our pay parity is equal."

Globally, tech firms suffer from a serious gender imbalance, with a study from consultancy Accenture and NGO Girls Who Code showing the proportion of women working in the sector is now smaller than in 1984.

While male tech executives such as Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma are well-known, top female tech leaders remain more lower profile.

Tan co-founded Singapore-headquartered Grab, a household name in Southeast Asia, in 2012 and now oversees hundreds of engineers.

She hopes to be a catalyst for change in the male-dominated sector.

She insists she did not face discrimination as she built up her company, but recognises others have.

"That's the role I'm hoping to play -- to help create more of these environments where I was fortunate enough to grow up," she adds.

- Battling sexism and inequality -

But industry experts say tech faces significant challenges in its bid for gender equality with reports of sexism and toxic cultures in some firms.

A total of 44 percent of female tech founders said they had been harassed, according to a global poll by NGO Women Who Tech, which surveyed more than a thousand people.

Last year, a female employee at Alibaba alleged she had been sexually assaulted on a work trip by her manager and a client. The Chinese e-commerce giant fired the manager -- but later police dropped the case and the employee was also sacked.

And in the United States, video game giant Activision Blizzard is under investigation over accusations the firm condoned a culture of sexual harassment and discrimination.

For the climate to improve across the sector, critics say addressing gender imbalance is vital.

In Southeast Asia, 32 percent of the technology workforce is female, higher than the global average, but still lower than the 38 percent in other industries, according to a Boston Consulting Group study.

Some issues around gender diversity are a "by-product of history" Tan says -- girls have not been encouraged enough to pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

According to the 2017 UNESCO report Cracking the code: girls' and women's education in STEM, only 35 percent of students of these subjects in higher education globally are female.

"We believe in 'normalising' women in tech. This starts by exposing females to many examples of women who have built their careers in tech," Tan says.

The company holds women's leadership events and runs mentoring schemes to guide new female entrants to the industry.

Girls should be motivated to take up courses such as software development and data science to help drive change, she adds.

"We need to help break that bias," she argues, adding that it is crucial to ensure a fair hiring process and female representation on interview shortlists.

Grab's role in the growth of Asia's gig economy has created opportunities for women who might previously not have been able to join the workforce, Tan suggests.

"Not everybody in the world can do a nine to five job, five days a week. Some of them need flexibility because they're moms, they are parents."

Tan adds that companies need to improve conditions for working mothers in order to ensure there's no brain drain of female talent.

"Being a working mother is not easy. And whether it's in tech roles, or just in general leadership roles, I think we need to be more empathetic of the situations that they're in and see if there are ways we can, you know, help, again, break biases."

- Harvard to $10 billion firm -

Tan grew up in a middle-class Malaysian family, the daughter of a civil engineer. She studied mechanical engineering in the UK, before joining McKinsey in Kuala Lumpur.

She went on to study for an MBA at Harvard, where she met Antony Tan -- no relation -- and the pair came up with the idea behind Grab. He is now the company's CEO.

A decade on, the company is now worth about US$10 billion and offers services ranging from digital payments to courier deliveries.

Operating in diverse markets, from developed, orderly Singapore to the traffic-clogged streets of Jakarta and Manila, the company faces unique challenges.

Tan, who has shadowed Grab's drivers and spent time on the complaints desk in a bid to get to know all elements of the business, describes herself as the company’s "plumber".

And her firm's local knowledge helped it to beat Uber in the region's ride-hailing battle, and it bought its US rival's Southeast Asian operations in 2018.

The company does face challenges. Since listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange last year, the firm has lost nearly three-quarters of its value after reporting falls in its earnings.

Despite the short-term challenges, Tan says Grab is committed to developing talent "for multiple generations", and hopes women will play a leading role in the tech sector in future.

"Female empowerment has taken generations to change and it's on a good trajectory, but it will take a bit of time," she says.

"I think we're all in a better position to have more diverse teams, and diverse leadership teams as well."

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Israel signed a free trade deal with the United Arab Emirates its first with an Arab country, building on their US-brokered normalisation of diplomatic relations in 2020.

Israel's ambassador to the oil-rich UAE, Amir Hayek, tweeted "mabruk" -- congratulations in Arabic -- with a photo of Emirati and Israeli officials holding documents at a signing ceremony in Dubai.

The Emirati envoy to Israel, Mohamed Al Khaja, hailed as an "unprecedented achievement" the deal that, according to the Israeli side, scraps customs duties on 96 percent of all products traded.

"Businesses in both countries will benefit from faster access to markets and lower tariffs as our nations work together to increase trade, create jobs, promote new skills and deepen cooperation," Khaja tweeted.

The 2020 deal was part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords that also saw Israel establish diplomatic ties with Bahrain and Morocco.

Two-way trade between Israel and the UAE last year totalled some $900 million dollars, according to Israeli figures.

UAE-Israel Business Council president Dorian Barak predicted that trade would soon multiply between the regional powerhouse economies.

"UAE-Israel trade will exceed $2 billion in 2022, rising to around $5 billion in five years, bolstered by collaboration in renewables, consumer goods, tourism and the life sciences sectors," he said in a statement.

"Dubai is fast becoming a hub for Israeli companies that look to South Asia, the Middle East and the Far East as markets for their goods and services."

Nearly 1,000 Israeli companies will be working in and through the UAE by year's end, he said.

- Trade diplomacy -

The UAE was the first Gulf country to normalise ties with Israel and only the third Arab nation to do so after Egypt and Jordan.

Talks for a free trade agreement began in November and concluded after four rounds of negotiations.

The latest was held in March in Egypt between Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, UAE's long-time de facto ruler who became president this month after the death of his half-brother Sheikh Khalifa.

Israel had in March hosted a meeting of the top diplomats from the United States, UAE, Bahrain and Morocco.

Sudan in 2020 also agreed to normalise ties with Israel, but the strife-torn northeast African country has yet to finalise a deal.

Israel has already struck free trade agreements with other countries and blocs, including the United States, European Union, Canada and Mexico.

In February, Israel signed a trade deal with Rabat to designate special industrial zones in Morocco.

- Palestinian issue -

The Abraham Accords broke with long-standing pan-Arab policy to isolate Israel until it withdraws from the occupied territories and accepts Palestinian statehood.

Palestinians condemned the agreements struck under then US president Donald Trump, and the conflict continues to inflame tensions, including between Israel and the UAE.

Tuesday's signing came two days after thousands of flag-waving Israelis marched through Jerusalem's Old City during a nationalist procession marking Israel's 1967 capture of east Jerusalem.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem in 1980, a move never recognised by the international community.

The UAE on Monday "strongly condemned" what it called Israel's "storming" of Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque compound, one of Islam's holiest sites.

The UAE "reiterated its firm position on the need to provide full protection for Al Aqsa Mosque and halt serious and provocative violations taking place there", reported the official WAM news agency.

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Black Panther star Letitia Wright says she got so close to co-lead Tamara Lawrance in "The Silent Twins", competing at Cannes, that both actors began to behave exactly like the siblings in the drama based on the true story of two black sisters in 1970s Wales.

The film tells the incredible story of June and Jennifer Gibbons, identical twins who refused to communicate with anybody except each other, and created a rich inner life that is both fascinating and dangerous.

Guyanese-born British actress Wright was catapulted to stardom with Marvel movie "Black Panther", as well as "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Avengers: Endgame", and dystopian TV show "Black Mirror".

"The twins were so enamoured with each other, so obsessed with each other. That's the same I was with Tamara," Wright told AFP.

"I'd say things like, oh my god, you're amazing with this or that, I love the way you do this, I love the way you think, I love the books that you're reading," she said. "And then in a split second: What am I doing here?", she laughed. "Life really imitated art".

Fellow Brit Lawrance, best known for the BBC's King Charles III, said she, too, felt like a sister to Wright during the shooting for "The Silent Twins".

"It wasn't always plain sailing, it was very much a sisterhood," Lawrance told AFP. "We got very close, and it's that closeness that gives you the capacity to get in each other's face," she smiled.

- 'Blown away' -

The film's Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska told AFP she was "blown away" when she first heard about the story of the twins that became famous after Sunday Times journalist Marjorie Wallace published a book about the case.

The real June and Jennifer Gibbons were born in 1963, daughters in Caribbean immigrants. They were the only black children in their Welsh community, spoke only to each other and were ostracised at school.

They spent all their time together, writing plays, poems and novels. Later they experimented with alcohol and drugs, committed petty crimes and got locked up in Broadmoor, a high-security mental health hospital, for 11 years.

"I thought: What an incredible story," said Smoczynska. "I couldn't imagine that it had really happened, 30 years ago. This is the moment that I knew I wanted to do this movie."

She said her film has "many layers". It's about "two sisters who love each other so much that they can't live without each other, but they also can't live together", she said.

The movie explores the notions of sacrifice and misunderstood artists, but also racism "and what the system did to these young black girls," said Smoczynska, though the theme remains understated.

"To make it just about race would be reductive, because race doesn't exist in isolation from everything else," said Lawrance.

"In this film it's interesting to look at its intersection with class, and the time you're born in, the generation you're born in."

Critics gave "The Silent Twins" a warm reception, with Deadline calling the lead actresses' performances "unforgettable", and The Guardian awarding four stars to the "well acted, disturbing drama" which the paper added was "heartfelt" and "absorbing".

It is competing in the Cannes Festival's Un Certain Regard section which showcases mostly young and innovative film-makers.

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Many had crossed continents and had bought tickets for multiple nights.

"I've been a fan since 1975," said one woman, Roxanne Dixon, who wore sparkly "A" and "B" earrings, a gold-trimmed white satin tunic and gold boots.

"I came from Australia just for this."

"We came all the way from America and it was worth it," said Caleb Graham, 33, from Florida, he and his partner wearing matching black ABBA T-shirts.

The concert show at a purpose-built 3,000-seat theatre features digital avatars, or "ABBAtars" performing hits from the 1970s and 1980s as well as songs released last year, when the septuagenarian former bandmates announced they had reunited to record a new album.

After an invitation-only premiere  -- attended by Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia -- Friday was the first chance for ordinary fans to experience the hi-tech show.

Ages varied from children to people old enough to remember ABBA first time round.

"I just think it's incredible how, you know, ABBA draws people of all different walks of life together, all different ages," said Jordan Charlesworth, 27, a public health agency staff member wearing a sequinned one-piece.

"It's close to the soundtrack of your life, isn't it, when you get to 56," said Sarah Armstrong in swirly turquoise trousers, who had come with her sister and daughter.

The ambitious show is a hugely expensive project, with The Times reporting that ABBA need to recoup £140 million ($177 million, 165 million euros) to cover costs.

Band member Bjorn Ulvaeus, 77, told AFP ahead of the premiere: "I know that this is one of the most daring projects that anyone has done in the music industry, ever."

- 'Jaw-dropping' -

Concert-goers see a 90-minute show, with a dozen live musicians on stage backing up the avatars.

It is set to run seven days a week until early October.

The avatars are the product of a years-long project, designed in partnership with a special effects company founded by "Star Wars" creator George Lucas.

Critics praised them after previous shows "resurrecting" dead performers have been slammed as unrealistic and creepy.

This time, there was "nothing ghoulish", wrote The Times.

The Guardian said the digital effects were a "triumph" and "the effect is genuinely jaw-dropping".

Fans said they felt they had watched a live show.

"It was amazing, so immersive, I really felt like they were there," said Dawn Waugh, 63, who was attending with her 26-year-old daughter.

"It was the most wonderful feeling of being back in time," said another fan, Stan Papoulias, 56, originally from Greece.

"I've been an ABBA fan for 45 years and I never thought I would see them in the flesh -- or something like that."

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The seven stars, dressed in matching dark suits and ties, with white shirts, joined White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at the briefing room podium -- a tiny, but powerful stage.

The singer Park Ji-min, better known as Jimin, said through a translator that the group is "devastated by the recent surge of hate crimes" in the United States.

Another member, Suga, appealed for tolerance, saying, "It's not wrong to be different. I think equality begins when we open up and embrace all of our differences."

Group members did not take questions from reporters before going into a meeting with Biden and, according to the White House, recording "digital content."

Outside the mansion's grounds on the other side of a tall black fence, fans who dub themselves the "Army" gathered in hopes of a glimpse.

The brief appearance before journalists itself reportedly garnered more than 300,000 viewers on the White House's YouTube channel, more than 10 times the traffic on a day when the only people watching events in the briefing room are mostly media or political professionals.

It was certainly something new for economic policy advisor Brian Deese, who had been scheduled to brief reporters on Biden's fight against US inflation right after the group left.

"I get to go home and tell my kids that BTS opened for me," he said to laughter.

- 'Youth ambassadors' against hate -

Biden issued the invitation to "discuss the need to come together in solidarity, Asian inclusion and representation, and addressing anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination, which have become more prominent issues in recent years," the White House said.

Anti-Asian sentiment and violence in America have grown during the coronavirus pandemic in a phenomenon many blame on fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Biden's Republican predecessor Donald Trump often blamed the pandemic, which originated with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, as "the China virus" and also mocked the deadly virus as "kung flu."

Just in 2021, hate crimes against Asians shot up 339 percent, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

The trend stands out within a general rise in violent crime, with the ugliest incident taking place in the Atlanta area, where a man shot dead eight people at massage spas, six of them Asian women.

The White House praised BTS's floppy haired, stylish stars as "youth ambassadors who spread a message of hope and positivity across the world."

Band members, all in their 20s and who frequently appear wearing earrings and lipstick, have given a voice worldwide to a generation comfortable with gender fluidity.

They are credited with generating billions for the South Korean economy, and their label enjoyed a surge in profits despite holding fewer concerts during the pandemic.

Biden, who at 79 is the oldest person to become president, has often reached out to young celebrities and social media influencers to try and inject some glamor into his team's messaging on social and health issues.

These included pop singer Olivia Rodrigo and the Jonas Brothers in campaigns to persuade young Americans to get their Covid-19 vaccines.

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British rock legends The Rolling Stones open their European tour with a gig in Madrid to mark six decades since the band was formed.

The Sixty tour will include 14 concerts across Europe with the first taking place in the Wanda Stadium, home to Atletico Madrid football club.

It follows the band's "No Filter" tour, which began in 2017 but saw the North American leg postponed due to the pandemic.

After a long delay, they resumed the tour late last year, wrapping it up with a million tickets sold, although missing their drummer Charlie Watts who died in August at age 80.

The Rolling Stones helped define the Swinging Sixties and the hippie era with timeless hits such as "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction".

Frontman Mick Jagger, 78, and fellow band members Keith Richards, also 78 and Ronnie Wood, who turns 75 today, arrived in the Spanish capital last week.

"Sympathy for the Devil in Madrid. The Stones are in town! Countdown to the first show is on!" they wrote on Instagram, posting a picture of the Fallen Angel fountain in the Retiro Park, referencing one of their best-known songs.

"Enjoying lots of what Madrid has to offer, from fallen angels to Flamenco!" tweeted Jagger, with pictures of him having a beer and visiting Picasso's "Guernica".

He also posted a brief flamenco-style clip of "Paint It, Black".

- Whistle-stop tour -

The Stones will tour 13 cities in Europe, playing two gigs in London.

Following the opening night in Madrid, they head to Munich and then on to Liverpool to play at the city's Anfield football stadium in what will be their first gig in more than 50 years in the hometown of The Beatles.

They will also play in Amsterdam, Bern, Milan, London, Brussels, Vienna, Lyon, Paris then the German town of Gelsenkirchen with their final show in Stockholm on July 31.

As well as celebrating their 60th anniversary, the Stones are also marking 50 years since the release of one of their most iconic albums "Exile on Main St".

Jagger and Richards were childhood friends who lost contact until a chance encounter as teenagers on Dartford station southeast of London.

The following year, they would go on to form what would become one of the world's best-known rock bands.

Dartford station today carries a blue plaque to mark the historic encounter.

They did their first tour of the UK in 1963, kicking off a stellar career which would see them release more than 50 albums, both studio and live, with millions of copies sold.

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